Hulu launches Mac desktop app, goes fullscreen
Hulu has launched a fresh assault in the ongoing battle for online viewers’ hearts and minds. Though this latest effort merely highlights how far the company still has to go.
Hulu has announced and released Hulu Desktop for Mac, which arrives with essentially one noteworthy feature—full-screen mode.
This is a free, as in you get what you pay for, download (2GHz Intel Core Duo and higher, 2GB RAM, OS X 10.4 or higher, 2Mbps or faster broadband and Flash 9.0.124) and you don’t even need a Hulu account to view shows and movies. However, to use the features that make Hulu useable—subscriptions, queuing—you need to create an account and/or login.
After downloading, installing, restarting and comparing performance between the Flash-based browser app and the stand-alone Flash-based app, I can’t say one offers better performance than the other—neither is good in fullscreen—on my 2.16GHz MacBook with 2.5GB RAM, running the latest version of Leopard. After all, both are just flavors of Adobe’s ubiquitous (and just as oft despised) Flash player.
One feature—the ability to float Hulu—would make this application eminently more useable. Beyond that, an interface and user experience designed to facilitate discovery, as opposed to being algorithmed into corners, would be nice.
That said, how about a bald-faced copy of iTunes browse mode? However unsexy it might be, that would get us where we want to go quickly.
Great sense of anticipation during the download; an underwhelmed sense of “meh” after using it.
What are your impressions of Hulu Desktop for Mac 0.9.1?
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